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We’ve all done jobs we haven’t enjoyed. There was a time in my career where I edited a lot of fart jokes and T&A one-liners for small market radio stations (I think I may have actually preferred losing the feeling in the tips of my fingers as I pulled frozen chicken wings out of a 50-gallon drum during my week-long stint at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor).

My former boss, a voice-over who thought he was the top of the heap when it came to being considered The Voice Of God, couldn’t even be the driver in this fantastic bit of video :

But, to his credit, it was at that gig that I first learned about music libraries and produced my first volume of production tracks.

Burst actually looked into hiring Don Lafontaine on a script for the demo of our very first production music library, Gravity, back in 1997. When we realized we’d have to sell a few vital organs to pay his fee, we went searching and found Vic Caroli… and ended up with something much more appropriate anyway.

Maybe I’ll go dig up that old demo this afternoon.

These guys intrigue me to no end. Anyone out here dig Ken Nordine? Man, what a legendary set of pipes.

Thanks to sync.sound.cinema for the flashback. [dh]

UPDATE : I found it… the original Gravity Music Library Demo with Vic Caroli’s voice-over. One caveat, however - this was produced in 1997, people.

Two items of note re: our recent love of All Things Eighties :

The Gameover Project is doing some funs things inspired by videogames of the 80’s with their stop-motion videos based on arcade classics. Here’s Space Invaders (featuring a killer soundtrack impersonation via a human mouth) :

And the Blogosphere is going nutty over the rebirth of the DeLorean - the car made famous by the 1980’s MegaHit, Back To The Future.

Just because. Enjoy. More new music soon. [dh]

This past month we’ve brought you hipster tracks mixed with brat pack love (Aquanet for the Hipster Set), and a collection of pop rock radio flashbacks (RadioActive Mix Tape)… all part of our rediscovery of the 1980s - the Decade Of More.

The final installment of our three part Tribute To The Eighties couldn’t wrap on a more appropriate note than with our tribute to the ubiquitous hair bands of the era and the Rock! and Metal! they so passionately spew :

Blind Allegiance - 11 (eleven!!) songs ripe for nostalgic and/or humorous licensing opportunities - is coming at you later this week… with amps blazin’.

While we’re putting the finishing touches on our ode to the outrageous, please enjoy this parade featuring Dokken, Iron Maiden, Wasp, Journey, Dio, Blue Oyster Cult, Judas Priest, Queensryche, Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, Night Ranger, and Yngwie F’n Malmsteen :

To further blur the line between reality and parody, in true Being-John-Malkovich style, Spinal Tap’s David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls even make an appearance.

And if you just can’t get enough - and let’s face it, the era’s mantra was More Is Better - there’s a documentary. Thankfully, it includes footage of the lead vocal sessions featuring these classic lyrics :

we can be strong
we are fire and stone
and we all want to touch a rainbow

You can thank us later. [dh]

We aspire to be creative, innovative, unique even, in our attempts to please our custom music clients looking for yet another Moby-ish or Coldplay-esque music cue for their commercial or promo.

I mean, it’s not like we get these requests every day.

I’d say once a week.

To which we then privately protest, “C’mon people, it’s 2007!!!”

We like Richard Melville Hall and Christopher Anthony John Martin as much as the next custom music house, but would really, really love to be asked to create something new, fun, exciting, and super sweet. You know, like Amy Winehouse or Albertina Walker.

(Oh, wait… we have been asked for those this month. Thanks guys!)

Aaaaanyway, in hopes of pleasing our favorite customers we hope to find some way of balancing the line between making our clients’ clients happy and fulfilling our musical fantasies of becoming the next…. well, er…. Moby or Coldplay - which you can’t do by imitating their every hit!

But here’s an example of everything we don’t want to be associated with… see if you think this new promo for Euro 2012 is just a bit too close (<-- and that would be a case of MAJOR understatement) to the recent iPod ad featuring the music of The Fratellis.

You be the judge :

Oh, one more thing… the music library world isn’t immune to this syndrome either. I’ll never forget hearing a ridiculous rip of Lou Vega’s Mambo No. 5… cleverly titled….

… wait for it …

“Mambo No. 6″

I wish I were kidding. [dh]

So, you’re looking for a way to connect with the kids, to tell them that there is no pressure to disrobe to soon. The problem is that you’re a 40-year-old advertising executive, and can’t relate the way used to. That’s where we come in. Think of us like your “man on the inside”, cleverly disguising ourselves and surreptitiously floating you tips from the bowels of the teen-friendly indie Oz.

Who could forget the best song from the wholly forgettable artist Jermaine Stewart? Former Shalamar and Culture Club background vocalist turned chaste pop sensation? Anyone?

Let us refresh your memory-

Remember? Well, Jermaine is hot right now.

Not only did Gym Class Heroes interpolate the chorus into their song “Clothes Off”, but the Toronto-based Kids On TV released a cover version on their album Mixing Business With Pleasure.

Listen to Kids On TV’s version of “We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off”

The Kids On TV version oozes enough of that perfect cocktail of “cooler-than-thou” and “accessible-and-fun” to really get a high school sophmore to re-evaluate their attitudes towards modern society’s lax sexual mores (though it may leave them with a taste for cherry wine).

If you can’t mine the treasures of the 80s and re-smelt it into 2007 gold, then you’re not trying hard enough. [ms]

As is the general rule, a bunch of Brits made some really good music, and now I, as an American, am going to wax poetic on how brilliant it is.

Alice Russell is a British soul singer that rolls with a much cooler crew than Joss Stone. She has performed and recorded with underground artists such as Quantic Soul Orchestra, Bah Samba, and Kushti, and recorded this cover of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” with Nostalgia 77.

The grime on that band is so thick I wrote my name in it, and Alice’s voice makes me want make babies.

Her new album, “My Favourite Letters” can be downloaded from iTunes, or purchased the slow way.

Also check out Nostalgia 77’s album The Garden, which includes said cover of “Seven Nation Army”.

Those guys at Tru Thoughts Recordings have got this stuff locked in. [ms]

[via Analog Industries]

For those of you not in the know (an infinitesimal percentage of our readership), Jon Brion is awesome. Expanded, he is a multi-instrumentalist, session musician, artist, songwriter, producer, and arranger. He has enough slashes in his repertoire to save the NHL. He is perhaps best known for his work with Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, and Rhett Miller, and his soundtracks for Magnolia and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Apparently, in 1999, VH1 and Jon Brion shot a pilot for a variety show starring Jon, Elliot Smith, Robyn Hitchcock, Grant Lee Phillips, The Eels, Rickie Lee Jones, and Cheap Trick. It was, essentially, a Largo show in a larger venue with snippets of footage shot around LA. It was never released, partially because Jon Brion reportedly wasn’t happy with it, but mostly because it was too awesome for the masses. The video is large and worth it. Download it while you sleep, and watch it while you are awake.

Fairfax Avenue has the video available for download, as well as a bunch of other Jon Brion goodness. [ms]

He makes me so happy. Music supervisors worth their salt should be all over him.

[ms]

I kind of feel, as I watch this, that I’m experiencing the pinnacle of the information age. In a perfect world, it would, with complete lack of hyperbole or overstatement, stand in history as the high water point of the internet. It would be, as Hunter S. Thompson put it, the point where “the waves crested, and rolled back.”

Just as the wrong song can change the entire mood of a scene, the wrong video can tarnish the complete scope of imagery painted by a song.

That’s our fancy way of saying “Watch this, it’s messed up.”

Check up on it. [ms]

This week: New Jack Swing

Simply described as the kind of music found on solo albums made by the members of New Edition in the years following the break-up, New Jack Swing is responsible for some of the best party jams of the early 90s.

Let us review:

“Poison”- Bell Biv Devoe
“Rub You The Right Way”- Johnny Gill
“My Prerogative”- Bobby Brown

Ralph Tresvant, alas, has yet to do anything of note.

Teddy Riley, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis basically owned the patent on New Jack Swing for a number of years, until it was stolen by the white man in the form of The New Kids On The Block, Color Me Badd, and Joey Lawrence.

New Jack, indeed. It’s about time we saw a commercial comeback for the former party genre of the 90’s. Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison” as the new theme for Raid, Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step” representing Nike’s childrens shoe line. Give these boys a call… they’re probably not doing anything. [ms]